Packet drops may occur while forwarding packets in a network for many reasons. A network device may maintain a general packet drop counter that counts the number of packets it drops. This is a general count for the entire network device. The network device may be servicing many different flows, each of which may be dropping packets. The general packet counter may give insight that the network device may be experiencing problems in forwarding packets; however, it is difficult to determine the reason why the network device is dropping packets. This may impede any troubleshooting in determining how to improve the packet drop rate.